Ok there is a rumor that is going around work that the Canadian Jump Wings are no longer going to be a authorized Foreign Badge to be worn on Army ASU/Class A Uniform. I do not have any written documents saying if this is true or not. The reasoning behind this is that the training that one must go through to get the Canadian Jump Wings to too similar to the requirements for US Jump wings. The fact that US personal are not leading the jumps is not enough to consider the badge a Foreign Badge anymore. I was told that I might be able to get a copy of the new document tomorrow.

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Comments (26)

That would be BS since I believe if you do the Operation Toy Drop you will get foreign wings, even though you are jumping US Aircraft with US Equipment, only difference being presence of a foreign Jump Master. Plus it is a single jump… I could be completely off base too, since last jump for me was June of 1987

You can’t summon the one shop unless you sacrifice a live goat and draw a pentagram on the floor with its entrails. Alternatively, you can try saying “fill out a DA 4187” three times while looking in a mirror.

Just spoke to one of my soldier who graduated from jump school last week. He said one of the cadre mentioned it in passing. I guess they were measuring dicks, er ribbon length, and two of them got into an argument about the Canadian jump wings counting or not.

He also said the conversation then turned into a which school was scariest as far a sheer lack of saftey goes.

This is the first I have heard of anything like this for Canadian wings. Maybe if the Canadians were changing how their badge looks and we wanted to respect the retiring of the old one, but that is just my own guess.

As for the criteria for foreign wings, you only need a foreign Jump Master to qualify. Furthermore, I am not even sure if the Army would even allow an exit from any aircraft with foreign parachutes (though I could be wrong). My Company was given the opportunity to get a dozen or so guys some foreign wings right before we deployed and all we had was the foreign JM. (I was not selected to jump that day, I was not pay hurt and slotted for a separate fun jump the next month).

I felt most regs like that were kind of like a “suggestion”…you know, like a speed limit sign is for most folks.
I wore the 1st Mar Div patch on my right sleeve after OIF. It was NOT authorized, but I figured since the ARMY failed to get me ammo in Iraq, and the Marines did get me (and my team) ammo and we worked for them, I could wear it as my combat patch.

After Iraq, I never had even a Sergeant Major tell me the patch was not authorized. I even had the 1st Mar Div patch sewn on my Class As.

CI I had a few former Marines who joined the guard, they were all in the invasion of Iraq. As far as I was concerned they could wear their 1st Mar Div patch. They earned it just as much as anyone else, we only had one Lt get butthurt about it. Luckily, nobody listened to him…

@7 then connect to the http side of the site vs the https one. All the https one does is bounce you to the other one anyway. Either you’re not trusting the DoD root certs, or the army didn’t bother getting a good cert for their non-site. I didn’t see a cert error from my box, so it’s probably the first one.

I had only ever heard that the practice of sewing them on BDUs back in the day wasn’t authorized, any more than any other foreign badge. I hadn’t heard anything governing wear on Class As or ASUs. As of August of 2012, so far as I know, they’re still listed in Appendix D, AR 600-8-22 as authorized for wear.

Couple of points here. Foreign wings are a joke. The criteria has always been a joke too. Guidance from DA about foreign badges of any kind fall into 3 categories.
1. Not Authorized (Australian dick wrestling expert)
2. Accept but don’t wear (Brazilian Mtn Badge)
3. Authorized for wear

Canadian wings have for some reason floated in and out of favor over the years. I received mine in 1986 but AR600-8-22 in 1995 made them unauthorized. However a MilPer Mssg in August of last year reauthorized them for wear. The latest MilPer mssg I can’t read without a CAC Card so who the hell knows.

#5 CI: You’re out of uniform and knowingly wearing an unauthorized Shoulder sleeve insignia-former wartime service (SSI–FWTS) and it is an actionable offense.

Giving you ammo doesn’t qualify no more than the ARNG guys who guarded FAVs in a Baghdad motorpool deserved Special Forces CSIBs.

All: the “untrusted site” message is likely because the HRC site’s certificate was updated to a new certificate issued by a different DoD root CAs (DoD has a number of them) and your browser doesn’t have the corresponding DoD root certificate installed.

Sporkmaster: if you have a CAC reader at home or at work, you can log in to the USAHRC Awards/Decorations Branch web page with links to MILPER MSGs relating to same. There are two relating to foreign decorations there: 11-270 and 12-336. I took a quick glance and neither seems to address the issue. They seem to be admin instructions on how to award US decorations to an allied military member. I just gave them a quick skim, so I might have missed something. But I don’t remember seeing anything about foreign badges in either message.

You will need to login to AKO with CAC or manually (userid/password/security questions) to read the messages. Dunno why, but HRC is doing that these days for their MILPER MSGs.

However, it might not matter. AR 600-8-22 (Dec 2006) seems to say that Canadian Jump Wings are a “no go” for wear on the uniform these days. Per Table D-1 (p. 161), only one Canadian badge appears to be authorized for wear: the Canadian Forces Flying Badge-Pilot.

From WWII, we trained, the Brits trained or the French trained the rest of the world pretty much. So of course other countries school will be similar.
Sounds like some envious idiots are trying to shut down some ‘pimp’ badges that they can’t get.

kujo, Sporkmaster: thanks – learn something new every day. Looks like the Army added a load of foreign badges to the authorized for wear list last Aug. It also looks like Canadian jump wings was one of them. And since that updated list is from HRC and it’s later than the AR, it should take precedence.

Maybe that’s the “recent change” you were hearing about, Spork – and someone got things backwards. Might not be a bad idea to print a copy of that list and keep it handy, though – just in case.

I do wonder why the latest AR 600-8-22 at the Army pubs site doesn’t have that change, though. (Yes, I checked.) That updated table is the table out of AR 600-8-22. But I didn’t see notice of any update at the Army pubs site – and since it’s an electronic reg, that change should be easy to include in the “official” version at the APD web site.

The Canadian Jump Course is more similar to the British Army Course than the U.S. Army Jump School.
Guess all the guys who use to come to Petawawa every year for Menton Day will be disappointed when they can no longer wear Canadian Jump wings.
It was an annual affair where they came and jumped and got their wings , then invited us down to Bragg so we could get our American wings.
Maybe Fat ass Panetta don’t like the Canadians ?

About a million years ago, we were to jump into Canada. Low and behold it was cancelled because they couldn’t find any “Canadian Pathfinders.” We called BS on that. No foreign wings on that one. Canadian jump wings were the easiest to get because of proximity. To EARN foreign wings you had to be a foreigner! You had to jump in their country, their aircraft etc. I once jumped in Spain in their aircraft, their jumpmaster, but our chutes. We were awarded the wings anyway. In Turkey, we jumped their chutes (dangerous!).That was the criteria. Now in today’s nicer army, foreign wings are handed out like candy to kids at Halloween. Just have a “foreign jumpmaster” on an American aircraft on US soil and you get the wings? What Bullshit!

Unbelievable:

“As for the criteria for foreign wings, you only need a foreign Jump Master to qualify.”

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We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »